How the Mars Rover Landing Sites Were Chosen
Space.com

It has been a roller coaster ride, let me tell you! SETI Institute/NASA Ames scientist, Dr. Nathalie Cabrol describes the nerve-wracking process to select a landing site for the NASA’s Mars Expedition Rover (MER) mission. At a recent interview in the SETI Institute offices, Dr. Cabrol and Edmond Grin, her scientific partner (and husband), relived the ups and downs of their quest; a visit to an ancient dry lake bed at the end of the Ma’adim Vallis, a huge martian drainage channel. Cabrol and Grin were some of the earliest planetary scientists to recognize the tell tale features of lakes on the Red Planet.